Hoping to get some direction here. I’ve made good progress setting up my ST system over past few days.
I’d like to add an internal and external camera to this system… So when the system is triggered by either a motion sensor or a multisensor, the cameras would start recording.
I’m trying to find cameras that would automatically upload their recordings to google drive (no point paying for a video recording subscription when I have large Google drive subscription)
Any one done something similar like this? Any help would be great! Cheers
I use Arlo Pro cameras. They are rated for outside use and have decent(ish) batteries that last from a couple of weeks to a couple of months depending on usage as well as a USB charging port so you can also wire them up. They have native support in SmartThings and have motion detectors that can be used as triggers within ST and other ST sensors can be used to trigger the Arlos.
The Arlos come with a free of charge 7 day rolling recording library though you can pay to get longer. Importantly for me, you can also plug a USB drive into the Arlo Hub so I have a 1TB USB drive recording locally all the time (only oddity here is that viewing the library uses the online version and you have to disconnect the drive to view files on it). If you still wanted uploads to Google Drive then someone smarter than me will have to comment on how you might do that.
Most of the off-the-shelf camera solutions really want you to use their storage. The main reasons for this are:
revenue from subscription
lock-in to their product range
security from being in control of the end points
You might have luck finding one on IFTTT that allows you to set a rule that uploads any new footage to Google Drive. I didn’t find one with a quick search, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
Alternatively, there are products like https://www.ispyconnect.com which run on your local Windows PC and connect to your cameras. The advantage is you’ve got the footage so you can tell the app to save it wherever you like. The disadvantage is it’s a lot more effort to get it up and running (especially if you haven’t already got an always-on PC).
Just thinking around the problem and it occurs to me you could use an Eye-Fi SD card or similar. That is: an SD card with built-in Wifi.
You get a camera with an SD card slot and stick the card in, then instruct the camera to save everything to the card.
You then have a program running on your PC whenever it’s on which downloads the photos from the camera - many Wifi cards come with an app to do this. If you set your download folder to one you’re syncing with Google Drive, then the photos/videos will appear there every time they’re downloaded.
It’s not going to be as fast as real-time saving to the camera’s own cloud service, but it’ll work, and it’s fairly easy to set up.
If it’s cloud subscription prices you’re trying to avoid (like me), look at Blue Iris. I run it on a medium powered PC and have 10 cameras attached. It’s all stored locally (I’m sure you could back it up to google if you wanted), and I get to use pretty much any ip camera. I currently have a mix of four or five different types of cameras, and it works great.
Thanks @johnwest80 and @jymbob for the tips. Ideally I dont want to run a PC all day/night to support this. I’m surprised there isnt an option that supports this natively. I can understand camera companies wanting the returning revenue from subscription servers but I would have thought there would be a desire for personal cloud storage support also. I’ll look through IFFT as well and keep on the lookout